Word: mcgreevey
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Scott Fitzgerald wrote that about his great American faker, Jay Gatsby. Another faker, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, last week finally smashed the rock upon which his world was founded: "I began to question what an acceptable reality really meant for me," he said at one of the most extraordinary news conferences--at turns lyrical, philosophical and evasive--in U.S. political history. "Were there realities from which I was running?" And then his answer: "My truth is that I am a gay American." That thunderclap was quickly followed by two more: McGreevey said that he had had an extramarital affair...
...slaughtered his Republican opponent in 2001 and had long ago set an eye on Washington. But if this is a story of one man's dashed hopes--a man whose parents called him "our lad of great expectations"--it is also the story of a state's. McGreevey never fulfilled the promise he made in his inaugural address to "change the way Trenton does business." Actually, if you add up all the scandals involving McGreevey and the men and women of his inner circle, you could say he did change the way the persistently corrupt capital operates: he made...
...scandal that got him, the one that led to his sudden fall, was tangled up with homosexuality. For gay Americans, the Governor's words recalled the blistering shame and crushing fear that can accompany an adolescent's realization that he is gay. "I often felt ambivalent about myself," said McGreevey, who turned 47 this month. He compensated by being a good Catholic kid, a member of a pious high school group called the God Squad, according to the New York Times. He toiled fiercely--to transfer from Catholic University to Columbia; to become an assemblyman, mayor and state senator...
...that what brought it all down? Many gay politicians serve openly today, from Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe of Arizona to Oregon Supreme Court Justice Rives Kistler. And countless straight politicians could tell McGreevey that a career can perish even when your secret passions are heterosexual. Just ask former Governor Paul Patton of Kentucky, who had to abandon plans for a 2004 Senate race after he was accused of misusing his office to help a woman with whom he had had an affair. Or Jack Ryan, the millionaire who was running for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois this year until...
Like so many other gays who have come out, McGreevey was plainly relieved after the news conference. "When he came back into that room yesterday, I saw this great sense of a burden being lifted," says New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority president George Zoffinger, who has been friends with McGreevey for 15 years. Zoffinger says he didn't know McGreevey was gay until the day the Governor announced it. "He holds this in for 20 years of public life. Can you imagine having to tell your wife and family? They did not know." McGreevey told them only...